A story of God’s grace

Bishop Michael Campbell’s address to the LMS Annual General Meeting on 20 July 2019.

Saint Augustine of Hippo, North Africa, ranks as one of the towering figures in the history of the Church, and a most distinguished member of that group known as the Church Fathers. He was born in 354 in the city of Tagaste, modern day Algeria. His parents were Patricius and Monica, the latter of Berber stock. North Africa in his day formed part of the fragmenting and declining Roman Empire. In fact, the sack and fall of Rome in 410 would be the occasion for one of Augustine’s most celebrated literary works, City of God.

Bishop Michael Campbell addresses the Latin Mass Society AGM

by John Aron

Augustine’s father appears to have been a lukewarm Catholic, while his mother, Monica, was a devout believer and deeply attached to her faith. As a child, Augustine was enrolled as a catechumen, but was not baptized. It would be many years before that came to pass. He was a gifted young man and eventually went to university in Carthage, a city he would later describe as ‘seething cauldron on vice.’ Latin literature and Roman civilisation would have formed the backbone of the curriculum, with a particular emphasis on rhetoric and the art of polished speaking. The works of the orator Cicero and the poet Virgil remained a life-long love for him. It is worth noting that a lost work of Cicero, the Hortensius, set the young Augustine on fire with a love of philosophy and of truth.

While a student at Carthage and to his mother’s horror, Augustine fell in with a sect we know as the Manichees, and it would be ten years before he succeeded in extricating himself from their strange doctrines and way of thinking. Duality was at the heart of their system, two key and equal principles, one of good, the other of evil, and both in constant conflict. At this time Augustine had a mistress and would father a son by her, Adeodatus. As he relates in his Confessions, his mother, Monica, never ceased to storm heaven on behalf of her son, always convinced that he would one day return to the faith of his childhood.

Augustine eventually moved on from Carthage and crossed the Mediterranean to Rome, deceiving his mother, and leaving her desolate in tears on the quayside. He lodged with the Manichees in Rome but was increasingly disillusioned with their teaching in his quest for the truth. He even despaired of finding any truth that he could believe in, and suspended all belief, in common with the so-called Academics. Offered the post of public speaker in Milan, in what was then the principal city of the Empire, he took up residence there, followed closely by his mother, Monica.

Milan marked the turning point for Augustine, for there he came under the influence of Saint Ambrose, the bishop. In his confusion and bewilderment, he would listen to the preaching of Ambrose, initially to assess his style of speaking and manner of delivery, but gradually the content of the great bishop’s sermons began to touch him. In his Confessions he describes with great power and emotion a scene in the garden of a villa near Milan where, at the bidding of a nearby child’s voice, ‘take up and read’, he opened the letters of St Paul, saw a passage from Romans 13, which spoke deeply to him, and all at last became clear.

Augustine, his son Adeodatus, and others, were baptised by Ambrose in Milan, Easter 387. Having left worldly ambitions behind, Augustine decided to return to his home in North Africa, Tagaste, but while preparing in Rome at the port of Ostia for the journey across the Mediterranean, his mother, Monica, died. It was Augustine’s intention to live a lay, quasi monastic life of study and prayer, in common with a few friends at the small family estate in Tagaste, and some of his written dialogues survive from that time. This way of life lasted for several years, until Augustine one day went to visit a friend in Hippo and was practically and most reluctantly “forced” to be ordained priest by the old Greek-speaking bishop, Valerius. His reputation for learning and much else had clearly preceded him.

The LMS AGM was followed by Mass

by John Aron

Within the space of a few years he had succeeded Valerius as Bishop of Hippo, and would remain in that city as bishop for about thirty years. As he was dying, in 430AD, the Vandals were besieging the city of Hippo, and in his last illness he recited the penitential psalms.

Despite the breakdown of the Roman Empire, it is remarkable that Augustine’s writings have survived, and they have exercised an enduring influence on the life of the Church ever since. The major works which immediately come to mind are: City of God, On the Trinity, and the Confessions, in which he describes in inimitable fashion his spiritual odyssey and search for God right until his baptism at the age of thirty-three. A work never out of print! Apart from these, are his sermons, (in excess of three hundred), his letters, and major doctrinal works on Manicheism, Donatism, Pelagianism, errors and controversies he had to confront in his work as bishop.

The writings of St Augustine are imbued with the Scriptures. For him, as for the Fathers of the Church, every page of Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, breathed Jesus Christ. The coherence of the inspired Scriptures found their centre and coherence in the Son of God, the Word who was made flesh. Each text in some way pointed to Christ.

His Confessions are rich in psychological insight, into the nature of the human person before God, and a person’s incompleteness without God. He saw the providence of God in his own life story, especially in those he encountered, above all Bishop Ambrose and his mother, Monica. The restlessness of the human heart is almost immortalised at the beginning of the Confessions: You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

Keenly aware of the transience of all things, Augustine urged the necessity of interiority, of entering into oneself, and even transcending oneself to reach what is unchanging and eternal, God himself. Blessed John Henry Newman’s motto, ‘Heart speaks unto Heart’, reflects his deep familiarity with the thought of St Augustine.

What conclusions can we draw from all this?

The Saint’s acute realisation of divine providence in the often tempestuous years of his early life; contrary to appearances, Almighty God was guiding his steps towards the truth and to the Catholic Church.

The effect of his mother Monica’s prayers on his behalf. She never gave up hope, and ‘watered the ground’ with her tears wherever she found herself. She was aware of the natural gifts and ability of Augustine, and endeavoured from his earliest years to keep him faithful to Christ. It was a long road, but the Church owes a great deal to this simple, devout woman.

Augustine proved to be an exemplary bishop, devoted son of the Church, and a vigorous upholder and advocate of her doctrines: the true nature of the triune God, the all-importance of grace in the life of a believer; against the Donatists, Christ the real minister of the sacraments, despite the possible unworthiness of the particular celebrant.

Saint Augustine has been described as the first Christian psychoanalyst. His ability to describe the inner movements and motivations of the human heart, as in his Confessions, is astounding, and his penetrating insights into the human condition are as relevant today as when he first wrote them. His autobiography, the Confessions, remains perennially fresh, appealing and instructive.

More than any other Father of the Church, Augustine’s influence has been immense.